Dear Forum Editor. Re non technical posts

Some if not a non tech post get withdrawnbecause they are what they are. Would it be possible to have a General Discussion Forum where we could air our views on other matters relating to Computers and computing. There was a posy a couple of days ago about when we first used a computer. Within no time at all it had 40+ hits. There is another post today about whether or not some of us are getting a little 'porky' because of the time spent in front of our PCs for one reason or another. Thanks for your time and I hope you can find a way to accommodate us. Oh and a spell checker would be great too.

The difficulty with 'discussion' threads is that they rapidly tend to lose focus, and there's always someone who decides to lapse into personal abuse, or some other form of unacceptable content. This forum has succeeded because it concentrates on doing what it's good at - providing help with computing problems. At times we've been criticised for being too strict with our editorial control, but it's precisely that control which has ensured we retain a huge audience of all age groups and both sexes. Anyone can visit here, safe in the knowledge that they won't see bad language, sexual innuendo, or out and out verbal punch-ups.

Whenever one of these discussion threads appears we watch it, and when we think it's wandered off-topic, or is descending into banality we stop it. We'll continue with this policy because we know it works, and because there are a million chat-based forums out there for people who seem to have the time to spend hours talking about nothing in particular.

Spell-checker? I don't think so - you can get a neat little applet that sits in your Internet Explorer tool-bar and spell-checks your text. Called IE Spell it's a free download (although if ever something deserved a donation this does) and you can get it if youclick here

Down in the Opera Basement, I tried to start some serious dicussion, but look what it led to. I didn't mind, and I wasn't surprised by the outcome, but it is a good object lesson in what would happen here. Opera staff take a liberal view, and don't interfere much at all, which is one reason why it can get so out of hand. If you want some more general chat, it is not a bad place to visit.

I would be happy to see stricter regulation here, closing irrelevant threads after about ten posts. A little bit of banter is helpful to create a friendly environment, but it can soon get out of hand. Let's concentrate PCA's valuable resources on solving PC related problems. There are lots of forums for chat, games, enterntainment, religion, politics etc.